Archive for October, 2008

Reuters and now CNN Money reports that the United States Treasury says no to General Motors in providing the additional $10 billion dollars in aid to help with a merger with Chrysler.

” WASHINGTON, Oct 30 (Reuters) – The U.S. Treasury Department is not negotiating with General Motors Corp (GM.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and the owners of Chrysler LLC on a request to provide direct government aid to their proposed merger, a Bush administration official said on Thursday.

Instead, the administration is working to speed the distribution to automakers of $25 billion in factory retooling funds authorized by Congress last month, the official told Reuters.

Earlier this week, industry sources said GM had asked for roughly $10 billion in an unprecedented government rescue package to support its acquisition of Chrysler from Cerberus Capital Management [CBS.UL].

The request was viewed as over and above the $25 billion in funds to enable the automakers to produce fuel-efficient vehicles.

“Treasury is not negotiating with the automakers, the administration is working to get the $25 billion Congress already authorized to the industry,” the official said.”

I wonder if he’ll miss his all-wheel drive Saab 9-2x at all, now that he drives the sport sedan? We’ll see what happens when snow hits Scranton, Pennsylvania later this season. I don’t believe he was provided an XWD equipped sport sedan, but time will tell!

There has been a tremendous amount of news coverage lately speculating on discussions between General Motors & Chrysler about a possible merger.

This merger apparently will require United States taxpayers another 10 billion dollars in addition to the already requested 25 Billion dollars.

Here’s a question, why not put this vote on the November ballot asking us taxpayers if we want to allow you to merge, since you’re planning on using our money?

Secondly, where is Saab in all of this, just more reprioritization from GM that won’t ever come Saabs way now that they are focusing on a merger? GM holds the crown jewel (Saab), but think that it makes sense to focus on merging with a completely different company instead of turning the brand that they own, around for a profit.

I for one won’t approve of anymore bureaucratic mergers, acquisitions, if given the chance to vote on it, this is just more “shuffling of the deck chairs of the titanic”…

I leave you with a growing list of reputable news outlets covering this developing story over the past week:

Finding out about this design exercise, I initially decided to disregard it, but the photos of all of the renderings both inside and out tells me that someone was paid to do this, so why? This brings up a ton of questions, and here are my first two:

1) Are the designers at the General Motors Europe design studio now outsourcing design ideas for future Saabs?

2) Have these designers given up on having future designs inspired by other Saab jets. Do they know there was more than just the Draken, Viggen & Gripen, right?

It’s almost like this design exercise, although done by a professional firm, was funded in a similiar way that design student at UmeÃ¥ was with his design excercises on the 9-CX concept.

To take a look at all of the rest of the photos, visit this page here:

Here is the details:

The Saab Blackbird concept is a creation of Mark Kruse, a contracting designer working for Formation Design Group in Atlanta, GA. The concept is a tandem configuration two-seat sports car inspired by the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird jet. Developed for the year 2020 the concept features many innovations and unusual features not yet available on production cars.

The narrow design of the Saab Blackbird helps it to carve through city traffic and congested roads. The suspension can also pull in close to the body (making the vehicle taller and slimmer, thus shrinking its footprint) making it perfect to occupy special highway lanes developed for this specific type of narrow car platform. In slim mode the Blackbird is just 52″ (132 cm) wide.

Powering the Saab Blackbird concept are four in-wheel electric motors and batteries charged via a solar skin covering the top of the vehicle.

Inside the concept are more interesting features; including seats which can expand or contract to fit the occupant, these are controlled by a dial on the side of each seat. The driver has a concise LCD display screen mounted directly in front which offers up all vital driving information. The passenger has a wrap around display which can stream video, connect to the internet, show movies, or project outside scenery.

The irony in all of this is that this next generation 9-5 model for GM’s Saab brand, will evidently be a high-end luxury model. I certainly hope that they differentiate it every way possible because its brothers and sisters listed above, aren’t exactly brands known as “premium”.